Next week we will release changes to our upgrades, bank and the concept of Wealth on Empire Avenue.

Going Beyond 5,000 investments, sponsored by Privé!
Currently our top users have been limited by a portfolio size of 5,000. Next week, we will enable users to break that barrier with an upgrade to 5,500 that has been sponsored by Privé(e)PRIVE.

Our goal in going beyond the 5,000 limit was to make sure that Empire Avenue would be balanced and fair for years to come. With that in mind, effective immediately, we will establish a limit on the number of people that you can earn Dividends from, up to 5,000.

For example, if you have invested in 5,500 people, you will receive dividend payments from the 5,000 investments who would have paid you the highest dividend amounts based on previous days’ numbers. For top-end users this will mean less micromanagement of Portfolios and, most importantly, allows us to increase Portfolio sizes to much higher levels in the future.

A Savings Bank
Some of you probably know that you can save Eaves for specific items in the Shop. We are removing the “feature” of saving per item and instead giving you a Savings Bank. You will be able to move money between your Bank Balance and your Savings Bank as you wish. When you go to purchase an item in the Shop, we will deduct from your Savings first and then your Bank Balance. You will be able to see a history of your transactions to and from your Bank Balance on the Bank Page. Eaves that are currently saved per item will be placed in the Savings Bank. At this time there will be no interest paid on Savings.

We are doing this for a number of reasons, chief amongst them being that supporting per-item savings is a drain when someone cannot find what they saved for (as an example). In addition it allows us to expand the Shop further and is much easier to explain to new users. The Savings will be available on your Bank Page with Deposit and Withdraw buttons.

Upgrades will be changing in price
Many of our upgrades will be changing in price. In some cases they will go down in price, but we will introduce the concept of a “base price” plus a factor based on your Wealth.

This is the same type of concept we used with our first Power Up last December. As you become wealthier the costs will go up. While the factor of change based on Wealth will not be dramatic, it will give users a challenge as they grow in stature on Empire Avenue.

The first upgrades to change will be Increasing Portfolio Size (renamed from Buy More). These particular upgrades will see an additional requirement of hitting a particular portfolio size before being able to upgrade to the next. For example, to purchase the 1,250 portfolio size you will need to have made at least 900 investments.

Goodbye Luxury Wealth
Our last major change that we will introduce next week is the removal of a feature that very few people understood and was hard to explain simply. It also goes against our central premise that Empire Avenue is about earning Wealth for what you do online, and being able to use that wealth.

Luxury Wealth was a magic, imaginary score that went up every day if you owned Luxury Items. You could not use Luxury Wealth; it has a Leaderboard but little else.

We will remove Luxury Wealth, but we will do a little more for anyone with Luxury Wealth as a thank you for trying out this feature.

Even though Luxury Wealth was never meant to have an impact in our economy, we have decided to convert (one time) any Luxury Wealth you have on a 10-to-1 basis, up to a maximum of 1 million(e) paid out.

For example, if you have 1,000,000 in Luxury Wealth, we will give you, 100,000e and deposit it into your Bank. If you have 12 million in Luxury Wealth, you’ll receive 1,000,000e in your Bank.

You will get to keep the Luxury Items you bought and we will evaluate what Power Ups and Upgrades new Luxury Items will have when they hit the store.

Please Note: Items which give you real Eaves on a weekly basis will continue to do so. This also means that when we talk about Wealth it is your Bank (including Savings) and the value of your Portfolio

When will these changes be made live?
We are targeting all these changes for Monday January 16th or Tuesday January 17th. These changes are all currently in testing internally.

Update: Thanks for all the feedback. We are planning other features which would use the Luxury Items which generated just Luxury Wealth, however, we will fast track a second feature to address some of the concerns you’ve had in response to this. In addition to the one-time Luxury Wealth conversion to Eaves (you’ll see it on your Bank Account statement), you will be able to sell back to Empire Avenue any Luxury Item bought with Eaves onlyand which only generated Luxury Wealth, in order to recoup the cost. However, once you sell back, if the item is not in the Shop, you will not be able to buy it again for any future use that may be attributed to it. The choice then is yours. Items that were bought with Real World Money (ie $) will continue to pay you real eaves weekly, as before.

Share this:

Like this:

Related

73 Comments

Comment navigation

The Private Island and anything bought with money (three items) will continue to pay you the weekly eave based earnings, no change there. The daily wealth was however, wealth that you could not use so now that part of the equation was converted over to eaves at the rate we say in the blog. Going forward our goal is to provide you only things that matter to you, could be eaves could be a power up etc.

I have sold back every single luxury item I could and it seems as if I am still missing quite a bit in wealth. I am okay with the luxury items I bought with real cash that generate spendable EAvs each week I can’t seem to sell back all those Halloween items for a few handfulls of EAvs

I was #2 in Global Wealth yesterday….today I am #5. All because I bought all the luxury items right as they came out. What did I do? I have been a loyal Empire Avenue member and a staunch Empire Avenue Ambassador.

If you don’t mind, send me an email (brad@empireavenue.com) with your details as to what you think is missing from your Luxury Wealth conversion and sell-backs and we’ll check it out.

And yeah, removing that ‘luxury wealth’ value from wealth calculations impacted everyone (it wasn’t personal, honest!), but in order it develop and plan for future growth, we really needed to simplify things and that ‘magic’ number that was Luxury Wealth kept things more complex than it needed to be. So it *had* to go to make way for better things.

So send me that email and we’ll try and figure out why there seems to be a difference.

“As you become wealthier the costs will go up”
Basically this sucks. Some of us have been supporting you and took a big risk spending a huge amount of time and money and resources on EA.
Why punish those people? That is wrong and it scares me for the future. Why not just give everyone who joins 100 million eaves when they start so we are all the same?
Socialist thinking which is bringing society down. What’s next? A capital gains tax?
Yesterday I bought 600 in someone and an 8% commission flashed up. I refreshed and it was 6% the next time.What are you planning there?
What you guys need is to have someone who actually plays the game advising you how to run it.
With respect you are techies. Nice guys but you know squat about the game and social media.The instagram algorithm is set around 3 times as high as it should be as is 4sq. Both can be gamed like crazy and are.
My strong advice is that you should not punish people who have been your supporters

Brad…my luxury item breakdown purchase breakdown was the same as what I previously eMailed you. I am sending that eMail again. I know and understand everyone took a hit in regards to luxury wealth. I just don’t understand how I could lose so much in less than a 24 hour period.

I now own 5500 stocks. That took me less than 24 hours to do. Now what? What’s next? I have and continue to be an Ambassador for Empire Avenue. I describe it and portray it to others as much more than a game. It’s a social media network in its own right. Part Facebook and Part LinkedIn. It provides a mechanism that allows others to connect and collaborate with one another. But all of those things taken into consideration…this is a Stock Buy and Sell Game. I am now once again restricted in the number of stocks that I can buy.

Raise the Number of Stocks that one can own to 10000 (or do you have to wait to get a Paid Brand Sponsor in order for that to happen now?) Raise the Number of Shares that one can own to 1000 (or do you have to wait to get a Paid Brand Sponsor now?)

Empire Avenue has always been very tight lipped in regards to how many members it has within its network. That number could be 20,000…50,000, 100,000 who knows….but from what I have been able to learn there is only a finite number of stocks that are generating remotely decent dividends from their social media activity. I always laugh at the investors who say ‘I am only investing in those stocks that have dividends of “X”” because of the limited number of stocks in that category they quickly need to adjust their stance because it does not take a long time to run out of stocks. I believe that this is the true reason for only providing us with dividends from our top 5000 stocks daily.

I understand the need and desire to attract newer players. The more stocks and shares that you allow myself and others to buy spreads the EAVs to newer players. Not only will we be able to buy newer stocks as they arrive, we will be able to expand our ability to purchase and network with lower dividend producing stocks because we no longer have to “prune” due to limited space. Newer players (who may not be social media powerhouses) will be more engaged in Empire Avenue.

Looking back from 2000 to 2012….their is a long history and precedent of FAILED web based companies that somehow/someway alienated themselves for their core users through real or perceived changes and/or failure to really truly listen and engage in two way interactive communication. Empire Avenue is no longer in beta correct? If you want your user base to collaborate with you as you strive to reach Empire Avenue’s strategic and profitability targets. REALLY talk to us…DO NOT simply “talk at us” The “coulda, shoulda, woulda” ambiguity is not productive and efficient.

I love Empire Avenue. I have spent over 18 months on the site. It is the first site I check into in the morning when I wake up and the last one I refer to before I go to bed. In addition to time, I have invested real US money in purchasing upgrades and luxury items to support the Empire Avenue site.

I don’t want to see Empire Avenue go away as quickly as it appeared now that some traction appears to be gaining. I would personally feel a loss if that happened.

@Hansjörg: Thanks for the questions and I’m glad you like Empire Avenue! At times, it’s a work in progress and we don’t necessarily explain things as well as we could.

There’s two things that happened here when we removed Luxury Wealth:
1) we converted everyone’s Luxury Wealth into Eaves at a ratio of 10:1 – this was noted in your bank statement
2) we enabled in everyone the ability to sell back to us, at the purchase price, any Luxury Item which *generated Eaves*, and was paid for wholly by Eaves.

So, not only can you recover 100% of your purchase price in Eaves for Luxury Items (as described above), but you’ve also received the benefit of a conversion of Luxury Wealth into Eaves (which was never intended to be used as or replace Eaves).

Sorry about the confusion regarding ‘keeping the items’. If you sell them back to us you will receive the purchase price for the item in Eaves, and they will be removed from your inventory.

re: Savings Account: Unlike a regular bank, where in a savings account, the interest is actually a fee paid to you by the bank so that the bank can in turn use that money (to lend out as a mortgage, for example), we don’t use those Eaves for any purpose. But as @dups says in this blog post (http://blog.empireavenue.com/2012/01/10/beyond-5000-a-savings-bank-and-more/) Savings doesn’t pay interest *at this time*. We’re still enhancing the Savings Bank feature as you’ll see in the weeks to come.

I agree with Omar about having nowhere to spend eaves. I’m no where close to his wealth and I find it hard to spend all my eaves, especially if people quit and I get huge refunds. Lux items offered a place to dump eaves.

i had about 31 million in lux and so far i have sold the list below that totaled 25 mil including the Bonus for being a early adopter of any changes made on Eav and what do i get back from my hard earned eave investment a 6 million eave loss in total wealth? where’s the other 6 mil im not seeing it in the crap i still have?

About 18 hours ago Luxury Item Row Boat sold back to Empire Avenue 10,000.00
About 18 hours ago Luxury Item Watercraft sold back to Empire Avenue 20,000.00
About 18 hours ago Luxury Item Camcorder sold back to Empire Avenue 67,500.00
About 18 hours ago Luxury Item Stereo sold back to Empire Avenue 9,100.00
About 18 hours ago Luxury Item 2 Door Car sold back to Empire Avenue 10,000.00
About 18 hours ago Luxury Item MooRay Player sold back to Empire Avenue 35,000.00
About 18 hours ago Luxury Item Coupe sold back to Empire Avenue 20,000.00
About 18 hours ago Luxury Item Digital Tablet sold back to Empire Avenue 55,000.00
About 23 hours ago Luxury Item Shack sold back to Empire Avenue 2,000.00
About 23 hours ago Luxury Item Condo sold back to Empire Avenue 20,000.00
About 23 hours ago Luxury Item Low-Rent Apartment sold back to Empire Avenue 10,000.00
About 23 hours ago Luxury Item Hang Glider sold back to Empire Avenue 60,000.00
About 23 hours ago Luxury Item LED TV sold back to Empire Avenue 7,500.00
About 23 hours ago Luxury Item Townhouse sold back to Empire Avenue 40,000.00
About 23 hours ago Luxury Item Sedan sold back to Empire Avenue 40,000.00
About 23 hours ago Luxury Item 3D Television sold back to Empire Avenue 100,000.00
About 23 hours ago Luxury Item Sail Boat sold back to Empire Avenue 40,000.00
About 23 hours ago Luxury Item Cottage sold back to Empire Avenue 40,000.00
About 23 hours ago Luxury Item City House sold back to Empire Avenue 100,000.00
About 23 hours ago Luxury Item Suburban House sold back to Empire Avenue 200,000.00
About 23 hours ago Luxury Item Mansion sold back to Empire Avenue 500,000.00
About 23 hours ago Luxury Item Family Van sold back to Empire Avenue 60,000.00
About 23 hours ago Luxury Item Sports Car 1 sold back to Empire Avenue 100,000.00
About 23 hours ago Luxury Item Speed Boat sold back to Empire Avenue 60,000.00
About 23 hours ago Luxury Item Hot Air Balloon sold back to Empire Avenue 150,000.00
About 23 hours ago Luxury Item Glider sold back to Empire Avenue 300,000.00
About 23 hours ago Luxury Item Yacht sold back to Empire Avenue 100,000.00
About 23 hours ago Luxury Item Crop Duster sold back to Empire Avenue 600,000.00
About 1 day ago Luxury Item Luxury Yacht sold back to Empire Avenue 500,000.00
About 1 day ago Luxury Item Helicopter sold back to Empire Avenue 600,000.00
About 1 day ago Luxury Item Bi-Plane sold back to Empire Avenue 800,000.00
About 1 day ago Luxury Item Sea Plane sold back to Empire Avenue 1,200,000.00
About 1 day ago Luxury Item Airliner sold back to Empire Avenue 5,000,000.00
About 1 day ago Luxury Item Private Jet sold back to Empire Avenue 3,000,000.00
About 1 day ago Luxury Item Jumbo Jet sold back to Empire Avenue 10,000,000.00
About 1 day ago Bonus From converting and removing Luxury Wealth, see Blog 1 mil

This is just all wacky IMO yall are forcing us to sell off smaller active players that have invested in us.
I have always matched but without buymore 15 16 or a powerup there’s just no way to spend even 1 more million out of the 50+ i have banked ATM.

it’s just wrong!!!

all buymore14 did was burn 15 mil +750k in coms and allow me to buy 500 people that cost me 6 million and im assuming buymore15 will be more eaves (what a deal) not!!!

Maybe the place for extra eaves for now is the savings account (in real life no one spends all they have each day) and perhaps there will be ways to use these in the future, as in more pie or the ability to parlay them into real support for a non-profit or other worthy cause.

I support that idea Mick!! Michael Todd and others that have been on EmpireAvenue and know social media should be on an advisory board. This would be a huge benefit to EA members but would also give EmpireAvenue more credibility.